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September 29th, 2017

U.S. Forest Service

Listen to the full show here.

Barrasso Blames Inaction For Wildfires, Others Blame Funding Cuts

Wildfires have dominated headlines in much of western Wyoming this summer. Wyoming Senator John Barrasso chairs the Senate Environment Committee and this week held a hearing on a string of bills that proponents say will help keep those catastrophic wildfires at bay. But Matt Laslo reports from Washington that some people say that lawmakers are trying to do too much. 

Former EPA Admin Gina McCarthy Reacts To Changes In New Administration

Since January, President Trump has ordered systematic rollbacks of Obama-era environmental regulations. He’s voiced an intent to focus on energy development and jobs over environmental regulation. Many of these rules were crafted by Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency under Gina McCarthy. She was EPA Administrator during his second term. They focused on taking strong steps against climate change. Wyoming Public Radio's Cooper McKim spoke with McCarthy during her visit to Wyoming and gets her reaction to these changes. 

Jackson Filmmaker Gains Trust of Elusive Snow Leopards

The Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival attracted an international audience this week for what many call the Oscars of nature film. Finalists included Wyoming filmmaker Shane Moore. Moore started making films when he was just 12 and growing up in Granite Creek, 30 miles southeast of Jackson. He met pioneers of nature shows, including Wild Kingdom and Walt Disney, on his family ranch where they came to film. Moore was a finalist for two films, Born in China and Ghost of the Mountains. Both feature the rarely seen and rarely filmed snow leopard. Rebecca Huntington has more. 

America's Place On The World Stage: One Policy Expert's Take

For the last 30 years, Stephen Walt has watched American and World Politics. He’s a foreign policy expert and a historian of the Cold War. He visited the University of Wyoming as part of the Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholars Program, and he joined me to discuss the how the current political climate is different from the Cold War.

When Campus Rape Prevention Starts Before College

In August we aired a story about a University of Wyoming student who filed a Title 9 complaint with the federal government about the handling of her sexual assault. Since then Education Secretary Betsy DeVos initiated an overhaul of the federal guidelines concerning sexual violence enforcement on college campuses.  Wyoming Public Radio’s education reporter Tennessee Watson explores UW efforts to prevent sexual violence. 

Bringing The Children Home: Northern Arapaho Exhume Boarding School Graves

In 1881, fifteen children from the Wind River Indian Reservation were sent to the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania. All were the children of chiefs, sent bearing gifts for their white educators. But only six of those children survived the experience. Three were buried in the school's cemetery. Now, as Wyoming Public Radio's Melodie Edwards reports, the Northern Arapaho tribe has exhumed those graves so they could bring their ancestors home to be reburied. 

ESPC Launches Effort To Increase Legislative Accountability

The Equality State Policy Center has launched a new effort called The People’s Review. It’s intended to let the public know how their legislators voted on key legislation supported by social justice, conservation, and labor groups in Wyoming. The Director of the ESPC is Phoebe Stoner. She explains what they are trying to accomplish.  

Miss Wyoming USA Is Excited To Represent The State

Earlier this month Callie Mae Bishop was crowned Miss Wyoming USA. The Casper native had sought the title for a number of years. In real life, Bishop is a yoga instructor, rock climber, and serves beer…in other words…the perfect Miss Wyoming. She says the victory is a dream come true.  

Bob Beck retired from Wyoming Public Media after serving as News Director of Wyoming Public Radio for 34 years. During his time as News Director WPR has won over 100 national, regional and state news awards.
Before Wyoming, Cooper McKim has reported for NPR stations in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and South Carolina. He's reported breaking news segments and features for several national NPR news programs. Cooper is the host of the limited podcast series Carbon Valley. Cooper studied Environmental Policy and Music. He's an avid jazz piano player, backpacker, and podcast listener.
Based on Capitol Hill, Matt Laslo is a reporter who has been covering campaigns and every aspect of federal policy since 2006. While he has filed stories for NPR and more than 40 of its affiliates, he has also written for Rolling Stone, The Atlantic, Campaigns and Elections Magazine, The Daily Beast, The Chattanooga Times Free Press, The Guardian, The Omaha World-Herald, VICE News and Washingtonian Magazine.
Melodie Edwards is the host and producer of WPM's award-winning podcast The Modern West. Her Ghost Town(ing) series looks at rural despair and resilience through the lens of her hometown of Walden, Colorado. She has been a radio reporter at WPM since 2013, covering topics from wildlife to Native American issues to agriculture.
A multi-media journalist, Rebecca Huntington is a regular contributor to Wyoming Public Radio. She has reported on a variety of topics ranging from the National Parks, wildlife, environment, health care, education and business. She recently co-wrote the one-hour, high-definition documentary, The Stagecoach Bar: An American Crossroads, which premiered in 2012. She also works at another hub for community interactions, the Teton County Library where she is a Communications and Digital Media Specialist. She reported for daily and weekly newspapers in Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon and Wyoming for more than a decade before becoming a multi-media journalist. She completed a Ted Scripps Fellowship in Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado in 2002. She has written and produced video news stories for the PBS series This American Land (thisamericanland.org) and for Assignment Earth, broadcast on Yahoo! News and NBC affiliates. In 2009, she traveled to Guatemala to produce a series of videos on sustainable agriculture, tourism and forestry and to Peru to report on the impacts of extractive industries on local communities.
Tennessee -- despite what the name might make you think -- was born and raised in the Northeast. She most recently called Vermont home. For the last 15 years she's been making radio -- as a youth radio educator, documentary producer, and now reporter. Her work has aired on Reveal, The Heart, LatinoUSA, Across Women's Lives from PRI, and American RadioWorks. One of her ongoing creative projects is co-producing Wage/Working (a jukebox-based oral history project about workers and income inequality). When she's not reporting, Tennessee likes to go on exploratory running adventures with her mutt Murray.